Controversy wasn’t confined to just the Milos Raonic-Juan Martin Del Potro match yesterday at the Montreal Rogers Cup. In a third round match against Canadian youngster Vasek Pospisil, Tomas Berdych tried a sneaky underhand serve.

The incident took place in the third set with Berdych serving 30-0, 2-4. In response to the chair umpire’s time violation warning, a sarcastic Berdych made a quick legal underarm, underhand serve but it was disallowed by the umpire due to the pause in play.

“I announced, then you cannot serve like that,” the finger-wagging umpire told Berdcyh.

I think everyone commenting above misunderstands what is happening here in the video. The umpire didn’t call Berdych for serving underhand (which is perfectly legal, as everyone has stated). The umpire disallowed the serve because it was hit after he had already announced a time violation. Berdych quick-served in order to try to get the thing in the box before the umpire finished calling the time violation. And the umpire correctly did not allow him to do so, because he had already started to announce the time violation. The fact that it was underhand has nothing to do with it, and it was in no way a BS call at all. The serve was not legal and should not have counted as an ace because the point was already lost on the time violation. The umpire was exactly correct, handled the situation correctly, and there is no issue. That’s also why Berdych doesn’t argue with it. In fact, it looks like he was joking/sarcatic when he hit it in the first place…as in, he knew he’d already lost the point.

So all the outrage at the umpire is misplaced. He was just doing his job and doing it correctly.